Disability Stories

Just one small click in Settings and you will never again forget to add alt text to your images! It's easy, it's simple, it's free! Do it!

No seriously, do it, it's Disability Pride Month and intersectionality fucking matters, I don't care if YOU don't need the alt text, just hit the FUCKIN' BUTTON

The airlines want to make room for beds and shit for their first class customers because those people pay $7-15k a flight. Wouldn’t want to have to lose one of those spaces so, you know, us ordinary people can travel with some dignity/safety/ease.

Anyone care that for all these years, lots of wheelchair users literally haven’t been able to eat or drink ahead of or during flights BECAUSE THERE ARE NO BATHROOMS FOR THEM?!???!!!

Word on the street is the Biden admin is finally finally finally putting up a bill to force airlines to do what they shoulda already done because it’s 2023 and we’re humans and the tech already exists they just don’t want to… a bill to put wheelchair seating and accessible bathrooms on planes!!!!

I really don't understand why they can't just let people ride the damn plane in their wheelchairs? They have that on most buses where they just kind of strap you in. Why do wheelchairs become luggage on airplanes?

If you think of accessibility as features instead of foundational functionality that's part of the problem.

It’s Disability Pride Month and the only people I see posting about it are disabled people. We need you to show up y’all.

Flying as a wheelchair user is a shit show, always has been. But it’s reaching new levels of shit. Every time airline and airport staff act like you are the first wheelchair user to ever travel. The people supposedly trained to assist you may or may not show up. Policies to protect us are ignored.

Went to a restaurant with barstool seating up front, assuming they had regular tables somewhere in the restaurant. The hostess said the “only wheelchair accessible” seating was in the back “and up two steps.”
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Can’t quantify how many times I’m told a place is wheelchair accessible… with steps.

It is sad that the #airline industry doesn't solve these issues. A #wheelchair is part of a person. As you correctly note - we have the technology and knowledge to solve these issues. However, does #sociewty have the will to make it happen? #Accessibility #disabilityInclusion #accessibletravel

Hundreds of wheelchairs are damaged by airlines in the US every single month. These wheelchairs = life, health, independence, employment, well-being, family, responsibilities. It is WELL past time for the US govt to require airlines to have on board wheelchair seating. The technology exists.

In The Met's New Production of The Magic Flute, the Queen of the Night Uses a Wheelchair Inside Simon McBurney and Nathalie Stutzmann new, off-kilter version of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte .

Don’t be fooled by the headline here: https://playbill.com/article/in-the-mets-new-production-of-the-magic-flute-the-queen-of-the-night-uses-a-wheelchair

Shame on the Met Opera. In the newest production of The Magic Flute, they made the villain disabled and the singer herself isn”t disabled. It gets worse: she starts off with a cane and later users a wheelchair to, as the Met describes it, show her “increasing powerlessness.”

The reason why "the option to add alt text later" does not make me happy is because the point of alt text is to be inclusive of screen reader users and to provide an equitable experience /at the same time as/ the rest of the audience gets to see the content.

I've had three people suggest it now.

In my lifetime Republicans have gone from painting themselves as the financially responsible and anti-big government party to the party that spews flat earth conspiracies and idealizes a future that mixes the Wild West with 1984. Wild, bruh.

Look, I’m proud of fellow disabled folks graduating because the unequal access to education for us is institutionalized. But don’t perpetuate some viral video created to be inspo porn meant to make non-disabled people feel better about themselves. Help us dismantle the barriers to education.

‘Tis the season of the “look, a disabled person is graduating from school!” viral inspiration porn videos.

Them: *makes something as inaccessible as possible*

Disabled person: *manages to get through inaccessible barrier with blood, sweat, and tears*

Them: Wow, you’re such an inspiration! Look at this person overcoming their disability!

Yet the airline lobby claims they can’t make room for passengers in wheelchairs to remain in their chairs on board. It’s not that they can’t, they won’t. Gotta make more room for the rich!
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/18/travel/airlines-expanding-business-first-class.html?smid=url-share

The truth is you don’t need to know the answers to those questions and we’re not here to satisfy a stranger’s curiosity.

Sometimes people ask very intrusive questions. But sometimes they’re more basic - how long does it take to charge the chair, how many miles can it go, etc. While the 2nd set is the lesser of two evils and you may think you’re just making conversation, they still suggest the chair is all you see.

Disability:IN. First time I’d been in a room in which we were the majority.

Trying to find my people here. I had never met a single wheelchair user until I got to college. Many years later, I got to go to a professional conference specifically for pwd and for the first time, I was in a room full of my people.

It’s game changing when we get together.

I don’t know who needs to hear this (probably most people), but a wheelchair isn’t a prison, it’s freedom.

“You got snow tires on that thing? HA HA HA!” Cringey old man says to tired adult wheelchair user.

My brother, I assure you I have heard that one before.

I mean, damn, the number of old men who have called me, a grown ass professional woman, “Speedy” alone…

God, give me the confidence of the people who walk around legit thinking a lifelong wheelchair user had never heard a “speeding” joke until they came along.

You can’t possibly fathom the number of times a week strangers tell me the exact same jokes:

“Wanna race?”

“Watch out, you’ll get a ticket for speeding!”

“You need a cattle guard on that thing!”

And each time, they tell these fucking jokes with absolute confidence that they’re the very first.

Hi, I’m here to anonymously bitch about all the ableist shit that happens to me every day, because it’s fucking exhausting.